Part-time/Full-time Employment

 
-Source: Unpublished Current Population Survey tabulation.
All figures are for non-Hispanic black and whites.

Full-Time and Part-Time Employment

Full-time employment is defined as work for 35 hours-a-week or more; part-time work is anything less than 35 hours.
Full-year employment is defined as work for 50 weeks or more per year; part-year employment is anything less than 50 weeks.

• Black men (68.4%) were less likely than white men (72.5%) to work full-time for the full year in 1998. More than half of the difference reflects the higher percentage of black men who worked full-time, but for less than 50 weeks during that year (16.6% vs 14% for white men). Among part-time workers, black men were also more likely than white men to work for only part of the year (9.7% vs 7.9%).
  

• Black women were more likely than white women to work full-time in 1998, whether they did so for the entire year (61.1 % vs 55.1%) or for part of the year (17.1% vs 14%). They were less likely to work part-time (9.8 % vs 15.2% for full-year workers, and 12% vs 15.7% for part-year workers).
  

• Black women are about one-third more likely to work part-time than black men; white women are twice as likely as white men to work part-time.

Employment (Full- and Part-year) and Unemployment: 1989-1998

• Trends in part-year work for full-time black and white men run parallel to changes in their unemployment rates. This suggests that as exposure to spells of unemployment declines, more black and white men are able to work for 50 weeks or more during the year.
  

• Unemployment and part-year employment both peaked in 1992 and then declined. For black men, both rates rose again after 1995, before falling to their lowest levels in 1998.
  

• From 1993 to 1998, the gap between the percentages of black men and white men working full-time narrowed. By 1998, the gap was its smallest in over a decade.
  

• Since 1989, about 5--6% of black and white men have worked part-time for the entire year. (Not shown on chart.)

• Part-year employment for black and white women working full-time also declined as unemployment declined, but the trends were less pronounced than those for men.
  

• By 1998, the percentages of black women and of white women working full-time for the entire year had reached their highest levels in more than a decade. Conversely, part-year work among full-time female workers dropped to new lows for the period.
  

• Historically, higher percentages of black women than of white women have worked full-time. The gap in the percentages of white women and black women working full-time for the entire year closed between 1991 and 1993. Since then however, it has widened again.

References

Prepared by Cassandra Cantave and Roderick Harrison for the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. August 1999.